


Desert Flower

by Requiemesque



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Banksey, Car Accidents, Character Death, Drama, F/F, Heavy Angst, Misery Loves Company, Romance, team bae
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:55:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26242273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Requiemesque/pseuds/Requiemesque
Summary: Between her and Ronda, Becky thought that she always had the better eyesight. One time, she had even joked that it benefitted her because they had never gone for the same girl at a party. It benefitted Becky alright, and she used to be really happy about that. Except for that night, when she wished Ronda had seen the delivery truck coming. Because that was all she got. Wishes. Realistic wishes. Because you can’t ask too much from fate. Its tendrils had a way of corrupting all of the good things in the world.After a tragic car crash, Sasha finds herself without the love of her life, and Becky without a best friend.
Relationships: Sasha Banks/Becky Lynch | Rebecca Knox, Sasha Banks/Ronda Rousey
Comments: 17
Kudos: 25





	1. It Ends or It Doesn't

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phantom_rain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantom_rain/gifts).



> There's not much I can say except, this is an homage to the amazing Banksey (Ronda/Sasha) fics out there that you should check out. Also that I feel like the trio definitely has a brilliant chemistry, thanks to phantom_rain for exposing that. Presently, only 1/3 of these people are in WWE and I have to say I miss the other two. Ahuhu this, I guess is also my homage to the litany of grief-stricken poetry that's sitting on my reading list. 
> 
> Without further ado, enjoy!
> 
> Oh the poems aren't mine btw, and I was originally going to make this a one shot but I figured to structure it by one poem per chapter because I'm pretentious like that.

* * *

**It Ends or It Doesn’t**

* * *

_If the sun never comes up,_

_you find a way to live_

_without it._

_If they don’t come back,_

_you sleep in the middle of the bed,_

_learn how to make enough coffee_

_for yourself alone._

* * *

The shrill noise of the organ overwhelmed the entire church, wailing before anybody else had a chance to. The room was silent, just hushed fidgeting from girls less than the age of ten. All too young to understand why they wore itchy clothing, much less fully comprehend how people cry without tears.

Her shoes had an ugly click against expensive wood. It exposed the shell of a sole she had. How inexpensive and cheap it was, everything she was as she stood next to the gold-trimmed casket and sophisticated sketch.

“It ends or it doesn’t…” She cleared her throat because she couldn’t hear her voice. She took a deep breath. One. Two. It was a technique somebody told her. She thought she might have learned it drunk, by the side of the road, talking to a complete stranger. Back when it was acceptable to be stupid. “T-...That’s what you say, that’s how you sa-”

Licking her lips once again, she mentally steeled herself to gloss over the poem in hand. Clearing her throat, she tried once more. “That’s how you get through it… the tunnel, the night, the pain...”

Becky was never good at crowds. Not in front of Ronda’s family, her friends, the other side of her world that had always wondered why she and Ronda became such good friends. 

Best friends, in fact.

The only person who probably knew that the frivolities of her clan, the color-coded funeral, and the memorized paper was far from what her best friend would have wanted.

“No…” The piece of paper crumpled inside Becky’s fists. It was a bit of an overkill as her nails dug painfully against her palms. Her mouth opened and closed and opened, seeming to have forgotten what else to say under the weight of people’s expectations.

But in a funeral, just about any emotion could look like mourning. So she had a pass, looking as stupid as she did. 

“Speeches are for bitches.” Becky nodded to herself, a little bit loud on the microphone that sat atop the podium. A collection of wide eyes shot her looks of confusion, but she knew that if Ronda had been sitting somewhere, she would have been flushed with embarrassment. “That’s what Ronnie whispered to me in the sixth grade. That’s why the way I talk hasn’t been right ever since.” 

A couple of laughs, albeit none from the more important people.

“If you ask me why, an Irish motherfucker hasn’t developed yet an American accent for the fifteen years that I’ve spent in the land that’s so obsessed with guacamole and electi- e-elevators… Well now you’re just gonn’ have to go figure.” 

“Hah,” Becky chuckled. “Yeah. That’s- that's Ronnie’s fault too.”

The air was still and her voice echoed as if the halls had been empty, as if she was the only one that was there. The oak benches and stained glass emptied themselves out to showcase an audience of exactly one. 

“It’s your fault Ronnie,” Becky looked at the speechless ghost that propped herself up the church bench, sitting at the surface of the headrest, shoes firmly placed on top of where people were supposed to sit. Smile as bright as always. But it didn’t mean anything because she didn’t make a sound. “I think, I think that I blame you for a lot of things.”

“How my dumb ass somehow managed to get a degree… have a direction in life. Fuck! Can you believe that? I’ve got a career!” Her lips narrowed as she held her breath, swallowing the melancholy alongside the anxiety, the grief, and the disbelief. “How, I don’t know? I got to properly date as much people as I did… How, _fuck_ , I got to stop ruining my life. But most of all, I think that-...”

“I blame you for leaving me.”

_And me… for letting you._

* * *

It was only five o’ clock in the afternoon, but it was too dark and there was too much caffeine running in her veins without much of a justification. Becky couldn’t feel her heart hammering itself as she aimlessly paced outside of the chapel. Faint speeches and sad laughter seeping out of the supposedly soundproof door.

She didn’t like formal gatherings very much. Suits were itchy, and sometimes, belts had a way of digging into her skin, and slacks were too loose and she didn’t at all feel like herself.

Becky didn’t expect to be pulled towards the side of the church, where tall trees had taunted and rustled against the wind. It wasn’t her fault though, her senses were incredibly dense and the rocky pavement did nothing to expose the click of heels and the girl who wore them.

“Seriously?” Sasha’s eyes widened as she pulled Becky by the elbow. Her maroon-painted nails unforgivingly scraped Becky’s skin even from the blazer that she had put on. “ _Fucking_ seriously?”

“What!?” Becky hissed. 

“Speeches are for _bitches_? Irish _motherfucker_? Are you _fucking_ kidding me?” 

Because _of_ _course_ Sasha would have gotten mad. She had hand-written every single invitation letter, planned the decor, commissioned the painting, and wrote the eulogy - unsparing about every single detail about Ronda’s funeral. Dressing it up like a daughter; dignified, glorified, flickering like the melancholy of a golden afternoon.

“Jesus… why do you have to be selfish?” Sasha muttered under her breath, kicking broken gravel with the tip of her stiletto.

“I don’t know.” Becky faintly whispered. _That’s what she would have wanted_.

They exchanged a suffering sigh.

“I’m so fucking silly.” Sasha chastised herself, lightly banging her head against the bricked surface that she leaned against. “That’s… this… was totally not how-... _she_ would have wanted it.” _Don’t you think?_

And _she couldn't_ let Ronda’s name slip out of her mouth - though it had begged to be spoken; though she should have been the one to have testified for Ronda. 

But the taste of pain was so fresh, burning at the back of her mind like the harsh seconds before a car crash. 

“I think she would have loved it.” Becky mirthlessly chuckled to herself, playing with the hem of her blazer, she wanted to take it off. Black didn’t suit her, she meant that it did - just not today. “You arranged it, Sash. She loved _you_.”

* * *

Sasha went home that night and the lights were all off, and the only sound was that of keys and the prying night. Her footsteps didn’t make a sound, and it was still lightless when she got to the edge of her bed.

Still dressed with funeral clothes, she splayed on the mattress - surprised at how it didn’t dip as deep as it did from when she wasn’t the only one who lay there.

It should stop surprising her. There was no one else in the room. Nothing else, as she became aware of her own pulse, the stench of the outside world, the ticking clock, the beats of the environment. Everything else except for the sound that she looked for.

“Come back.” Her fists tightened around a handful of blanket cloth.

A tear ran from her eyes, and it was just the wind that wiped it away - blowing it into the air as it dispersed into nothing. 

She fell asleep that way, muttering two words that will never happen - albeit fully aware that she was still in denial. In the unguarded sleep, her lashes twitched unfettered as her hands caressed the spot in the bed where Ronda had initially slept. 

Sasha had always been a soldier at heart, running her hand over to reminisce lost things, like a trooper looking for their ephemeral limbs. 

Because in her dreams, she was nineteen, much much younger, and she just had met the love of her life.

* * *

_It ends or it doesn't._

_That’s what you say. That’s_

_how you get through it._

_The tunnel, the night,_

_the pain, the love._

_It ends or it doesn't._

* * *

When they first met, it was at a party, and it was loud and dense - because what else does one expect when you’re a freshman attending a frat party. Everyone’s voices had blended with each other to create an ear-splitting, cop-attracting discord and it drew out all the lovesick, timeworn sophomores like flies. 

Sasha thought that she might have met Becky first, and by met she meant that they’re eyes might have crossed for a couple of seconds until somebody - statistically speaking, a bulky frat boy with thin legs and an ironclad chest - bumped into her, drinks spilling all over her neatly pressed graphic shirt.

And in that crowd, she thought that white horses and princes never existed under fluorescent lights and broken stereo. 

But chivalry came in the form of an incredibly nosy sophomore whose face had been red that Sasha almost giggled at the thought that she was too Caucasian to even sport an Asian flush. Nevertheless, within the mixture of curiosity, helpfulness, and a dose of Ronda’s permanent frown, it was the first ‘are you okay’ in a party.

Sasha was nineteen and Ronda was a little bit older.

* * *

The next time their paths crossed again was the day after that. Ronda was a little- an hour late into the first class of the day, and Sasha heard the woman’s orange-haired friend commend her for coming at all. 

Summer was just about to end, and Sasha wasn’t exactly sure why the pair had insisted on wearing multi-layered outfits. She later found out that it was during their Bullingdon Club phase where Ronda had thought there was a Hemingway-esque life ahead of her and Becky thought she could have been a posh hedonist instead of just the latter.

But at that point they flashed each other a look of recognition; Sasha a smile, and Ronda a faint squint that still looked mean enough even though they weren’t surrounded by boisterous mouth breathers. 

It wasn’t an entire week after that class when Ronda introduced herself.

Later on, much, much later- she told Sasha that she had waited for any sort of test results to be announced. That way, the professor didn’t have to introduce who Ronda was - just the class’ _other_ smart student. 

Because of course, Sasha was top of that class. 

“I think I know you.” Ronda pretended to act coy.

Sasha had a good memory, good enough to remember just exactly how loud and unhinged Ronda had been at the party.

“Where’s your friend?” 

Ronda almost denied all ties with Becky - because even in the Irish girl’s absence, she had been the worst wingman. 

“I- wouldn’t say friend…” Ronda scratched the back of her head, and Sasha internally giggled as the woman lied through her teeth.

* * *

They talked about their bald professor, and then about movies before Ronda had even brought up any topic that was remotely related to dating; when she first got Sasha’s phone number. Because two months later, when Ronda had already decided to ask Sasha if she wanted to ‘hang out’ - they were already friends.

They started proper, much to Becky’s chagrin. People change ever so slowly, a little bit of reform per nanosecond, that when they’ve visibly transformed - it takes people by surprise. Becky didn’t notice the lack of enthusiasm that Ronda expressed when they’d find themselves at a bar on a Friday night. She had assumed that the girl was playing hard to get, and it was an effective way to game girls.

But they all crowded the two like moths to a flame, and Becky was the only one who was receptive. 

It was only the beginning. The more insistent Becky had become, the more that Ronda had dropped off of the face of the earth. It was instantaneously puzzling why someone had grown to want to read a poetry collection rather than check out the club’s newest feature - the rodeo.

Becky rode alone and Ronda stayed at home.

Convinced that she has got to end the phase, Becky confronted Ronda deep into the night - or if one preferred it, the early part of the morning- it might have been two-forty.

“Dude! What is wrong with you?” Becky had yelled, her boots firmly placed on top of the dewy grass of Ronda’s backyard as she stared at the girl with a book with a steely, betrayed gaze.

“I’m taking life seriously.” Ronda stated, with a tightlipped frown, trying but not trying to sound like the bigger, better person. Competition had not been new between the two. “Maybe you should do the same.”

It was too dark to see Becky’s pout, but Ronda was almost certain that that was the first time she had seen the girl walk so slowly since she had lost her favorite dog in high school.

* * *

The first time Sasha officially enters Becky’s life, she wasn’t present for it. 

The two hadn’t talked for weeks; as Becky found herself a little bit off of the eye of the storm - sleeping at pubs and waking up in other people’s beds whereas Ronda grew closer and closer to Sasha. Maybe, Becky was off to prove something and that life was better when she was around; and Ronda had just never missed the kind of life they used to enjoy.

It was organizations and paper and wholesome humor for Ronda. If it was possible, Becky judged and felt judged.

Becky’s phone blared up just as she was about to sleep, during that time when her strained friendship was distant lands and an ocean across from her immediate thoughts. 

_‘Meet you at the park?’_

They were best friends, and they thought, that while everything else in the world was negotiable - _they_ kind of weren’t. 

Ronda was the first to apologize. It was difficult at first, they were never the type to apologize - being cut from a similar cloth; so it required a lot of foot-tapping and swinging the swing that was too small for Ronda before her mouth formed an apologetic explanation.

Becky’s face was hooded, but her fists relaxed into her pocket that had previously been tense for the better part of the evening. She begrudged Ronda a forgiving grin and instead gave her a tightlipped smile, sitting on the swing next to Ronda.

“So… let me clarify, you’re skipping out on chicks because of one chick?” 

Ronda had to both flinch and snort at the use of the word ‘chick’; Sasha wasn’t anywhere near that sort of description. “...In a way?” 

“She’s gotta’ be some model, huh? You should’ve just told me.” 

“It’s… It’s… _ugh_.” Ronda planted her face against her palms. 

“What? Yo’ if you don’t want to share, I’m completely fine with that.” Becky tried to comfort her, futilely searching for Ronda’s face as she ducked to watch her best friend’s eyes close from the spaces between her fingers.

“It’s Sasha Banks!”

“Natasha Barks?” Becky shot up with delight. “ _Dude_ , what a fucking catch!”

“No! Sasha Banks! The one we sat beside last semester at psych!”

Ronda hadn’t realized just how punch-worthy Becky’s confused, pouted squint was. Then again, she had never been one of the people at the receiving end of it all - it was mostly girls whose names she had misremembered. 

“Purple hair?” Ronda added. 

“ _Oh_.” Realization hit Becky like a tru- no, a trainwreck. “ _That_.” 

Ronda reckoned it would have taken one or two weighted punches to take the lights out of Becky’s eyes. But they were growing into adults, and Sasha had told her that she was so quick to anger at times. So she breathed… and told Becky that Sasha was everything she wanted but didn’t expect - all at once. Not even wanted.

_Needed._

And Becky took it in.

 _You’ve changed_ , Becky thought - a warm smile had thawed cold disbelief inside of her. _You’ve changed, Ronnie_. She opened her arms to offer an embrace.

* * *

_Adapt. Adjust._

_It ends or it doesn't._

_It ends or it doesn't._

_We do not perish._

* * *

Becky passed by the 42nd street, just a little over a week after Ronda’s accident. It is at the conjunction, the corner where the seedy parts of the town and the middle class stores met. There was a blind spot. Between her and Ronda, Becky thought that she always had the better eyesight. One time, she had even joked that it benefitted her because they had never gone for the same girl at a party.

It benefitted Becky alright, and she used to be really happy about that. 

Except for that night, when she wished Ronda had seen the delivery truck coming. Because that was all she got. Wishes. Realistic wishes. Because you can’t ask too much from fate. Its tendrils had a way of corrupting all of the good things in the world.

You just can’t have it too good.

And she thought, that maybe that was why Ronda had to go.

She had it all.

Becky had always thought herself an orphan, growing up with her grandparents. It was late into the night when she had snuck out to watch the television in front of a half-asleep old lady that she saw bad men triumph over good. And she thought that she was never going to be good - and _that_ was a good thing. Of course, her grandmother gave her a slap on the wrist about it, but she had never felt truly called out. 

It wasn’t up until… three days after Ronda’s burial that she _sincerely_ felt like she had nowhere else to go.

Sasha opened the door and was met with a grief-stricken face - for a second, she had thought that if it weren’t for the paling burn of Becky’s hair color and chiseled jaw, she could’ve been fooled for staring at her own reflection. For all the times she had seen and been with Becky, it was never just the two of them, and she had never looked as hollow as she did. 

And she never looked like she didn’t know what to say.

"Takeout?" Becky raised her arm to reveal an obnoxiously big plastic bag that had at least half of a Chinese restaurant’s menu inside of it. “I… didn’t know where else to go.”

Sasha let out a short breath and stepped out of the door as Becky entered silently. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lemme know what ya'll think!  
> Poem is It Ends or It Doesn't by Caitlyn Siehl


	2. Depression Is A Shadow Living Inside Me

* * *

**Depression Is A Shadow Living Inside Me**

* * *

_Yesterday,_

_when I woke up_

_the sun fell to the ground and rolled away_

* * *

Her mother had always said that she came into the earth like water - or the air - fluid as they come; passable, neglected, armed with quiet strength. It wasn’t until her mother had passed before she could even reach the age of development that she realized that it may not have been strength. Because she, and her mother’s mother, had inherited the silence of their ancestors.

When she was born, it had been dusk, in the middle of a clinic that people rarely passed by. It might have been possible that her mother screamed, it was just that there was no one who was out there to hear it. The point was that when she was born, the night had been her friend - cradling her and that’s why she’s always been at peace with the lack of sun; or a father.

In Sasha’s world before she had created warmth for herself, the rooster doesn’t crow until she makes it crow. 

At such an early age she had realized that voices do not come naturally to most of the people in the world, and that some are just lucky to have been born with thoughts.

So she wrote. 

She wrote until she could speak it.

Nevermind the diary that had swollen with the words ‘no’ and ‘please’ and ‘I want this’ on its pages like a day that never ends. 

She looked at it once again, and it sank with the a big, hand-written, ‘Come Back’. Perhaps she was too tired of saying it again and again.

For so long she had lived without the sun and was okay with it; she did not know how it looked like. When people had described to her before what love was or what warmth meant, her ears had trembled and suffered through having to understand those words that weren’t her own. Love wasn’t six-foot tall, or the smell of aftershave, or big gestures for every second of everyday. It wasn’t a father, or a boyfriend, or a childhood friend. 

Because when seven billion people longed for the same thing in the word love, they all had meant differently. She was fine with never understanding it.

Until Ronda. 

It wasn’t even anything special, but, she _knew it_ the minute that she realized that they were two people who would always love being around each other. It felt like it was in their blood. And every day since that realization, Sasha felt like she had been intimately acquainted with what people mean when they talk about warmth. 

Maybe she should have said that, in the funeral, when she refused to utter a single word.

Everyone would have empathized, but would never understand. Because to them, the word love and warmth does not automatically paint the picture of a bright smile and lazily braided hair and a hundred and two failures that she called impressions when no one was looking. They would _try_ to understand. And Sasha thought, that just might have been the worst part of it all. 

But Becky dropped by just an hour ago, eating alone in a round dining table that hasn’t been touched or sat on since Ronda had left the house. She watched TV but looked at dead air until she told herself that she was done being pathetic. 

They didn’t say a word to each other, because to Sasha, words were more than Becky limply extending her dimsum platter with a, “D’ya want some?” where she only ate her words.

Except they looked at each other with hesitant, glassy eyes, and Sasha thought that maybe Becky was the only other person who understood.

“I can’t believe it…” Becky’s voice cut through the thick silence, it almost startled Sasha who had walked to sit in front of Becky. “It was never quiet in this place.”

“She always wakes up early enough to make sure of that.”

 _She learned that from you, waking up_. Becky almost said, fondly thinking about a Ronda Rousey who had almost dropped her slot in the varsity team due chronic lateness. They had both found the perfect excuse then. The faculty was afraid of their top donor, and it happened to be Ronda’s dad. “Uh… Sasha? D-Do you mind if I take a look around?”

Sasha shot Becky a quizzical look. It was strange when it was just the two of them. Ronda had always been around to fill the restless silence. 

“I just want to-” _See Ronda..._ “I guess I just want to-”

And Sasha knew exactly what Becky wanted to say. “It’s okay, go, her things are still upstairs.”

“Thanks.” Becky replied curtly, almost bowing her head on her way up. She wasn’t going to mention how it has been a week or two since the accident and Sasha hasn’t spoken Ronda’s name if it weren’t in writing.

* * *

Becky’s visits were a little bit frequent, as politeness withered, they've graduated from spaced out days to whenever she felt like it. It seemed that she, too, couldn’t manage the amount of time that she’s got on her hands. At least, that was what Becky said.

It started off at the dinner table, for the first week of visitation she just ate with Sasha - silently, because there was really nothing else to say. She would find every bit of excuse to spend time in Ronda and Sasha’s house. Because who would consistently leave their wallet, their keys, or even their _favorite_ jacket on different spots of the house?

For the most part, Sasha never replied unless talked to.

It had just been a little bit difficult when the heavy slur of footsteps coming from upstairs and then down and then back up again reminded her that the two were so similar in the way that they could never sit still in one place. 

But the house was deafeningly silent, so Sasha let Becky roam. 

She never paid much attention until the time that she had braved Ronda’s office, which smelled more like her than their bedroom that had been overpowered by Sasha’s perfume. It was empty, and Sasha had never wished that ghosts would exist, but if they did, she thought that that would have been a good time.

The leather seat had a slightly different elevation, a little bit taller for her height. It cushioned her perfectly, even though its dip had been a little intimidating. The thick cushion enveloped Sasha like a cold embrace. Autumn colors were already creeping up on summer leaves, and the temperature was much lower. It was only so early in the afternoon but the skies had darkened fast. 

Sasha reached out for Ronda’s leather jacket instinctively, it was a little bit bigger than her custom-fit blazers but it felt and smelled like home. But when her arms had bent back towards the seat’s headrest, there was no jacket to be found.

* * *

Becky denied it at first, showing up to help Sasha look. It was futile anyway as the two refused to turn the house upside down - there was something extremely Ronda with the way that the furniture were arranged, down to the way that the books were stacked.

But Sasha was Sasha and she had been patient but observant; and it wasn’t like there was anyone else who came in and out of the house like it had been a church seven days before Christmas.

“I just don’t fucking know where it could have gone!” Becky growled through gritted teeth, cold sweat visible from the way that her tank top had dampened. “This is _fucking stupid_.”

Becky collapsed into the ground, sitting on the floor, with a bent spine and fractured resolve. If the woman’s B-list acting had worked like lame pick-up lines over club residents, Sasha was at least immune to that sort of life. 

She stood there with arms crossed, trying her best not to sound like the woman she overheard Becky describe her as all those years ago. 

“Becky,” she started, overtly conscious of her tone but exhausted all at one. “I _need_ the jacket.”

Guilty people always hear accusations roll out of any person’s mouth - even in the most angelic delivery. 

“Why are you looking at me l-” Becky bit her cheek. “You know _what_? I was just trying to help.”

As she stormed off with a clipped sentence and fury that gave her boots the spring to bounce off of the house as soon as she could, Sasha knew that Becky bit her tongue.

* * *

_flowers beheaded themselves_

_all that’s left alive here is me_

* * *

The first time Becky blurted a series of curses and embarrassing stories in front of Sasha, Ronda had been red with embarrassment. They had only been officially dating for a couple of weeks, and it was just the first time the three were officially hanging out together. Her knuckles too had flushed with the mixture of anger and humiliation from under the table until Sasha had brushed her thumb over it, her hands wrapping itself over Ronda’s fist.

 _It’s okay._ Sasha smiled at Ronda, a hint of understanding creeping in between their eyes as it wasn’t much later that they were laughing at Becky instead of with Becky. They of course never knew that the Irishwoman had already noticed.

It was the palpable shift in the air. Anybody could smell love if it was in front of them. Because by the time that the sky had cracked open to reveal the stars in the night, Ronda and Becky had dropped Sasha off and Becky saw that the kiss between the two wasn’t starving.

“ _Dude_ you are so _whipped,”_ Becky grinned through her teeth, alternating flashing the road and Ronda that most annoying look of all time.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Ronda sardonically chuckled, almost in an attempt to hide the ear-to-ear grin that she almost shared with Becky. “You don’t even have a girlfriend.”

“Right.” Becky almost made a drunken turn towards a different route altogether. “I’m too busy enjoying my God-given youth, I’m _sorry_ if I’m not jumpin’ out towards wedding bells.”

“Who said anything about marriage?”

“Fuck off.” Becky snorted. “All that googly eyes? It’s a slippery slope from there, one day you’re Ronda fucking Rousey and tomorrow you’re tied down to a house, like a _bitch_ , twenty-five pounds heavier.”

“Fuck _you._ ” Because Sasha wasn’t anywhere looking, Ronda drew a crisp slap towards the back of Becky’s head. She almost hit the steering wheel.

“What the fuck!?”

“Fuck. You.” Ronda flipped her off. 

And they went silent, after a couple of chuckles. Becky had thought about the road ahead, eyes focused into making sure that the car didn’t wiggle as much as her line of vision did. But it might have been the first time that Ronda considered what it would be like to build a future with someone. 

_It would be nice_. 

She carried those thoughts into her dreams, if dreams were what she could remember thinking about during the day. 

Wishful thinking got them for as far as they did, in hindsight.

* * *

It was a fairly enjoyable night, the university’s team had won several medals - Ronda being one of the jewels in the school’s seasonal crown. There was the party, where the athletes had met sponsors, executives, and scouts for professional teams; and _then_ the after party.

Even with the surmounting organizational work and college parties that Sasha was able to attend, it was in that private, rented club that she realized that she was worlds apart from Ronda - who had been carried by her people, surrounded by model-esque women who could wear heels for hours, and expensive liquor. 

But as soon as the champagne was popped, Ronda walked away from the crowd and towards Sasha whose drink stood untouched. 

“Hey.” Ronda propped herself up in the stool next to Sasha as she leaned towards the bar, eyeing her girlfriend from head to toe. She cleared her throat and summoned an accent that could have only been recently extinct. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

Sasha let out a short laugh, flushed with a pensive embarrassment as her fingers fidgeted around itself. “Hey,” she replied, half-playful. 

The hesitance was immediately caught. Ronda scooted her stool closer to Sasha. “Hey, what’s the matter?” 

“It’s… it’s nothing.” Sasha tucked a handful of semi-damp purple hair behind her ear. “You should go have some fun.”

“Fun?” Ronda followed Sasha’s gaze, towards blinding lights and claustrophobic dance floor. “You think _that’s_ fun? Please, baby, you’re mistaking me for Becky.”

They went home early. It hadn’t even hit past midnight, but if there was anything that Ronda has had practice on, it was being able to feign a stomach ache - so as to not offend the doting people who had sponsored the party. 

Ronda bid her goodbye when they stepped foot outside of Sasha’s dorm room. It was already about two in the morning, they drove around town, towards particularly nowhere - with a mess of fast food crumbs and plastic cups littered in Ronda’s car. It was just like any other Friday.

Except Sasha had already opened the door and as soon as Ronda spun to walk away, Sasha grabbed her by the elbows and pulled her into the room. It was the first time Ronda had seen the entirety of Sasha’s room and it was the first time she had truly seen the stars. 

Because Sasha kissed Ronda and it wasn’t anything like quick pecks and the shy caressing of lips. It was _deep_ and it started a fire at the pit of Ronda’s stomach. Nevermind that they sloppily hit the wardrobe and stumbled over three different types of furniture, completely rearranging the organized appearance of Sasha’s room. There was a blaze in Sasha’s eyes and it twinkled under the moonlit sky. 

That night, there might have been a shooting star, it was too special for it to not have brandished a flickering, wishing rock. 

They fell over the bed and paused to look at each other.

_Are you sure?_

Sasha took a deep breath.

It was her first time.

_Yes._

* * *

_and I barely feel like living_

* * *

The house blasted with a ringtone that wasn’t hers. Her eyes glimmered with false hope as a Pavlovian conditioning washed over her like cold saltwater. Ronda’s phone had rung, except it just kept on ringing and there was no one left to answer. 

Sasha steeled herself, with a clenched fist and steps that could never, ever be fully prepared to answer Ronda’s phone.

“Hello?”

* * *

It reminded her so much of the old times, picking up Becky from a bar because she and Ronda lived together and Ronda was on the friendless Irish’s speed dial. But it had been years ago, and Sasha had known about how some people age backwards, it’s just that she never thought she could see it for herself.

The bar was already halfway through closing and Becky was splayed out drunk in the cushion, with little space left in the table as the Irish curse declared her still alive after three buckets of bottled beer. 

Most importantly, the woman wore a leather jacket that was too large for her now-meager frame. Becky’s muscled physique had started to wither, alongside her punctuality in the office. All of the work Ronda had helped Becky through - gone. In a millisecond car crash.

It was Ronda’s jacket. 

And Sasha wasn’t sure why anger boiled at the bottom of her feet which sprung her up to stomp her way towards Becky, grabbing her by the collar with the little bit of strength she had left from not being able to eat as well.

“Becky.” She swallowed the unnecessary curses that threatened to spill out of her tongue, and hissed out the best, most tactful words that she could think of. “You _cannot_ revert to being a drunk, _pathetic_ mess. It’s not what _she_ would have wanted.”

Except that’s not how Becky played. The woman in front of her slurred. “Oh yeah? You’re telling _me_ that you know what _Ronda_ wants?”

“Yes.” Sasha fists tightened around Becky’s collar, her face as flushed as the other woman, breathing anger out of the words she didn’t say - but came out anyway through the steam that left her nostrils. “Why are you drinking!? _Becky_. You _know_ that’s how- fuck!”

_You know that’s how she died._

“And why do you have her jacket? Becky, that is _not yours_. You can’t just… God! You can’t just fucking steal things like that! That is _not_ yours.” 

Becky’s eyes had darkened, violently pushing herself away from Sasha’s grip. 

“You can’t even say her name.” Becky spat, followed by the coldest laughter that Sasha has ever heard come out of the woman. “You can’t even fucking… live with the reality that _Ronda’s_ gone. She’s _gone_ , Sasha! And it’s your fault.”

“Do _not_ bring her into this,” Sasha retorted, transparent tears forming on the corner of her eyes as her fists clenched and unclenched to reveal scraped palms. “She did not deserve the kind of bullshit way of dealing that you’re doing right now. And honestly?”

Sasha breathed once again. “If it were up to me? I wo-”

“What?” Becky’s eyes widened, her jaws tightening at the implication. “Say it.”

But Sasha didn’t continue, shooting Becky a final glare before she shook her head to leave the pub. 

“Say it!” 

“You’re drunk and you’re angry.” Sasha whispered, low enough for only Becky to have heard it.

Except, Becky knew and heard what Sasha wanted to say.

_It should have been you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depression Is A Shadow Living Inside Me by Rupi Kaur


	3. Called Back

* * *

**_Called Back_ **

* * *

_Still, I cannot rest_

* * *

Sharp glades peaked through the window and it was already dark before any of them had noticed. The forecast said that the lunar eclipse was to happen at that precise hour, and true enough, the moon went up in the morning. And the darkest night of the year lasted for hours.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” The cold had only started to settle from the atmosphere, and Ronda was adamant in making sure that warmth was enclosed in the blanket that they shared. 

Sasha shot her a look of disbelief, the kind that you don’t throw kids when they talk about Father Christmas and his global variations before the age of ten. 

“So… you _don’t_ believe in ghosts?” 

“I’m trying to sleep.” Sasha rasped, pulling the blanket over to her head as she once again hid in comfortable sheets only for Ronda to pull it down once again. “Teddy, please, it’s two in the morning.”

“It’s eight.” Ronda whispered, patronizingly, her head propped up by her elbow that sank deep against the soft mattress. She flashed Sasha the smile that carried all the audacity of young men hitting on younger women. “Lunar eclipse. So you’re telling me you don’t believe in ghosts?”

“Do you really want to have this discussion?” _Your test scores have never been higher than mine_. Sasha raised a challenging brow, lazily facing Ronda and matching her smoldering gaze with an intense stare of her own. Sasha launched herself into an argument, about the different possibilities that ghosts may have existed and all the reasons that they would have been impossible. 

Finally saying her piece, Sasha ended with a sigh. “Do _you_ believe in ghosts?”

“Yeah, I’d like to think that in _some_ way, we all live forever.”

* * *

Mortals counted forever in measured ticks; sixty nanoseconds is a second and twenty-four hours is a day, or maybe a lifetime. It’s funny, because when you’re waiting; seconds are eternities, but also; before you know it, the morning is the evening brushed with pink and purple strokes. 

Becky had already stopped dropping by. 

It took Sasha half of the day to get rid of the long seconds spent not listening to podcasts and critically-acclaimed films, the taste of the finer things in life permanently bland in her mouth. Because it wasn’t until she found and started Ronda’s computer that she found another way to kill time as it slowly kills her too.

She stared at their photos, enclosed in messy folders and unorganized files. It had always been a Ronda thing to accidentally drag a photo towards the documents folder and completely forget about it. 

There were pictures from when they first bought an underwater camera, a folder full of blurry photos from the lake and saltwater accompanied by stolen shots of a confused and rowdy face, looking for the button that allows her to capture the photos. 

It was on a virgin island where they first baptized the camera. Sasha had insisted that she, of all people, was not one to be dragged into a place with bare-minimum infrastructure. Because the sun rises only once in a day, and Sasha couldn’t live without the fluorescent lights from an urban jungle. 

“You’re watching too much movies.” Ronda casually shrugged as she brushed her teeth, after leaving Sasha with the brochure that contained photos- copies of the real adventure that awaited them were it that Sasha agreed. “It’s not that bad.”

“I’m just not very fond of bugs,” muttered Sasha.

They ended up going of course, a couple of months after that conversation. And although it was far from the paradise that Ronda had described it as, Sasha knew that Ronda’s paradise was early mornings spent on the beach, interacting with the locals. They sold temporary tattoos and wild braids and friendship bracelets with shells from the open sea. It was rare that the couple liked the same things at once, but at that point in time, Sasha realized that it didn’t matter.

From the infinite that bounced from the azure coast to Ronda’s cobalt eyes, Sasha knew that love would have been enough. 

_If people ever ask, this is my story,_ she looked at the sharp-eyed smirk of the woman a mile away from her. _I fell for the best person in the world._

And she thought, then, at least, that that was going to be in her speech at their reception. She was going to say that people so rarely get hit with fairy tales, and she was one of the ones who got lucky.

* * *

_until I write these words down for you_

* * *

When she set foot on the American soil, it was still the land of opportunity and new beginnings. Fresh-faced and a starry-eyed gaze towards the horizon of endless sea; her parents had settled in the bowels of the lower middle-class. In a bustling city, incrementally bigger than small-town Dublin, Becky found herself wandering about all summer, fascinated by the sheer volume of goods that were sold and sold cheap within the country.

She had only started to flourish into her teenage years when she first figured out how to weave through the urban jungle, the unforgiving environment of being a foreigner and a freshman in an All-American high school. Simply put, it wasn’t the reek of grilled cheese and lunchboxes and all the experimental food that kids liked to eat; it was that they made fun of her, and she hadn’t realized it until later.

It just took the crashing realization that America wasn’t Dublin, and in America, so many things that didn’t matter - mattered to people. 

“They’re making fun of you.” A sandy-haired girl casually sat beside Becky, not looking at her as she spoke with sharp precision and an unforgiving tune. “What are you gonna do about it?”

“Huh?” Becky stared at her with wide-eyed confusion, forfeiting the bite of sandwich that she was about to take. “What’s it about me?”

 _It’s the accent, dumbass_ , Ronda scoffed. “People don’t like people who are being themselves.”

Ronda told her then, that first of all, she had to stop talking about potatoes. And then, she learned that Ronda was originally from the capital, except her family moved to the lesser known part of the state to watch their business grow. It wasn’t long after that Becky realized that everything that Ronda had, she didn’t, and yet, the other woman had taken a particular liking towards her.

“We’re _outsiders_ Wendy.” Becky had first learned of what a steely gaze looked like from her newfound friend who looked at the short pavement like it had stretched for forever. “But we can _own_ this place.”

Her parents got laid off from work a couple of months before she was officially a sophomore. They were earnest, loyal workers but it had been the advent of the new technological revolution. People called in technological unemployment, and some of the think tanks had called it ‘jobless growth’ - but whatever it was to Becky’s family, it had meant that they ate less food and that she couldn’t study during night. 

It was America, the birthplace of innovation. And in America, hard work and loyalty wasn’t enough. You had to be lucky. 

Becky was fifteen when she first climbed atop the school building, going past all hazards and breaking all the rules from a page of the handbook. And as the breeze of the high altitude hit her face like waylaid madness, she knew that she was done being life’s bitch.

 _Dream a little_ , Ronda looked at her proudly, perched on top of an empty crate at the school’s rooftop. And Becky, embraced the narrative like, becoming the unruly pair that they were as they threw a punch against the wind.

* * *

“I need to get rid of my accent.” A bright, amber glow fell from the tip of Becky’s cigarette, lighting up like a firefly in the middle of the mirror blue night. She lazily stretched her legs and set it on top of the coffee table. 

“Bitch, don’t ash in my balcony, the ashtray’s over there.” Ronda hissed, but eventually smoothed out her tone into a restrained snicker. “But what’s this _aboot_?”

“Fuck off." Becky threw Ronda a dirty look, before relaxing back into her chair. “Goddammit! How hard is it to properly say ‘have you ever considered getting a card’?” 

“Shit, did you just get fired?”

Becky scoffed as a response. 

"That's bullshit."

They did most of everything together, taking on the school like the chaos of autumn colors. Ever since Becky and Ronda became synonymous to each other, people had left them alone. At first Becky had plastered for herself a smirk and a pout that did not at all reflect who she thought she was, but it wasn’t later until she grew into the mold of her own brazen spirit. 

People parted like the red sea, and Becky drank euphoria like the expensive liquor bottles that they had emptied in Ronda’s room. 

_We are conquerors_ , she thought. _We will own this city._

True enough, the Rouseys did and Becky didn’t - that much she knew. So ever since the day that she’s had a foretaste of what it was like to hold power over people, Becky had taken the extra mile to step out of her own shadow

Like in anything else, once you believe it; you become it.

Winter had only fallen from the same year and Becky felt like she had aged decades. As she got out of the car repair shop, her palms had been grimy like the dirt snow before her - shaking in cold but it didn’t matter because her heart leapt at the implication that her life was hers and hers alone. Her parents were already drifting apart. Recessions have a way of breaking up families. For sure, blood isn't thicker than copper. 

She had spent Christmas at Ronda’s house. Ronda’s dad who carried himself with the brusque fashion of the world during the second World War was particularly fond of Becky, and on that day, Becky had decided that role models existed for her once again. She embraced the gentlemanly crudeness of the stride that Ronda’s father took, almost becoming the second child of that family who so much loved the first and only.

But it was only the father who liked her. When he passed away, so did the exclusive treatment that allowed her to feel like she could have been one of them; coming out of silvery cars with canes and expensive pocket watches, sticking out like a sore thumb in a town that was too poor to even be mentioned in the earlier maps.

So she worked and she worked hard, to afford the lifestyle that was never quite meant for her - it didn’t matter what the job was, or how it fell on the ‘arguably legal’ category.

Except, you don’t flash children with money.

They tend to believe that fortune, no matter how earned, was the end of the road. It had made Becky ruthlessly irresponsible, skewed priorities and what not. All the attempts to look and feel like something, that she didn’t want to earn.

Of _course_ , she wouldn’t have taken life that seriously; after all, life didn’t take hers seriously.

* * *

_I’m nobody_

* * *

“Are you serious?” Becky’s voice blasted from the other end of the phone, sputtering radio noise against Ronda’s ear.

When Ronda first told Becky that she wanted to propose to Sasha, it was midday and the sun had only scorched into a glare of burning yellow and white wisps - bouncing against office glass and melting lunch break ice creams. It had been a long time coming, a month or two before she set out to actually scout for a ring, prying for Sasha’s favored jewels covertly.

“Are you sure about it? Dude… that’s- that’s _permanent_.” 

And she wasn’t sure if it was because she was driving towards the sunset that she felt like she could live forever, or it was the high from the Drive Thru soda, but as the tires of her car came to a screeching halt in front of a jewelry store; she immediately knew that she wanted to give Sasha everything. Starting with herself.

She looked at the clouded sky. 

She was sure about this.

The night she had received a call for the engagement ring pick-up, the shop was already officially closed. They told Ronda that she could come in through the backdoor given that the ring was a special request, straight to the owner. 

Heart hammering, Ronda stepped out of her car and towards the shop, panic crackling in the cold night. Becky was to originally come with her, her best friend having the ability to ease off any kind of tension, especially concerning the matters of life. But deep within her Ronda knew that with this, she kind of also had to be alone anyway. 

She plucked out the velvet box and kept it in her glove compartment, its texture running smooth against her thumbs as it grazed against where most of Ronda’s future life practically relied on. It felt perfect, close to perfect, but it felt right. 

“I got the ring!” Her tone had a little bit of bounce in them, which was awkward for a Tuesday night. But Becky was the only one who knew, and knew everything.

Over the phone, Becky flashed a faint and content grin. “I know it’s been a long time coming. I’m practically… one, two, I don’t know how many years late in asking this. But, you know-”

“No, I am not going to prom with you.” 

Becky chortled, scratching her face and leaning over the glass window of her office. “No no, you fucking fucker. Ronnie… this is _big_. And you need to be a hundred-percent sure about this. So… why her?”

She drove close to 42nd street, just after she had already taken a detour to remember to buy Sasha’s request. She was going to cook pancakes and bacon tomorrow, and Ronda immediately imagined what that would have been like if they were married instead of just living together. 

“I don’t know Becks.” 

The clouds had started to close and the air was dangerously still.

“And I think… that’s a good thing. I _don’t know_ exactly _why_ I love her but I just do.” _Until we wither into age and dissolve into the earth from whence we came_. “I’ve never been more sure of anything my entire life. She… not only made me want to be better but she-”

A clash of broken glass and screeching tires were heard from Becky’s end of the phone, and her heart had stopped for a couple of seconds.

“Ronnie?”

She nervously laughed into the white noise that buzzed over the previously clear signal that they had. “Ronda, can you hear me?”

* * *

The courtroom’s silence was deafening as the defendant pleaded guilty. 

He was a middle-aged delivery guy, drunk on his own supply of beer and possibly a hint of brandy. It was a second-degree felony, a decade and a couple more years in prison and a little bit of over ten thousand dollars worth of fines. 

Sasha had stood quietly in the front seat, refusing to look at the man that had taken Ronda’s life; and Becky on the back, the face of drunken uselessness burning in the back of her head. Nevertheless, they watched the value of a life become reduced into punishable numbers. Every dream and aspirations that Ronda was set to achieve, disappearing into thin air. 

Before the sentence was completely delivered, Sasha had already walked out of the courtroom, thunderous heels creating a wailing echo against the marbled floor. A sob almost erupted from her throat, but she already knew how guttural it would have sounded like.

She had never cried in public. Not when she was a kid, when she didn’t have a father like everybody else did; and not when she was an adult, when life once again took everything away from her. Except now she’s completely convinced that throughout her life’s entire existence, it wouldn’t stop raining.

Ever. But at least clouds would cry for her. 

A clumsy pace stormed right after Sasha, chasing her in designer shoes and elegant slacks. Becky had learned much ever since the day that she had buried the influx of converse and graphic tees from her closet. 

“Sasha!” 

Sasha picked up her pace, and it didn’t look like it because she had walked like a startled feline. But the white stilettos in high inches could only do so much to keep a guarded distance between her and Becky.

Hence, when Becky drew close and pulled Sasha by the elbow, Sasha’s eyes had been glassy with hesitant tears. 

“Why didn't you come with her!?” 

The accusation weighed heavy on Becky, a debris of car glass and memories raining like fire from the guilty parts of her guts. It took awhile for her to swallow it then, for days and weeks, but when she finally did - she had to admit to herself that she might have heard Ronda die. In fact, it was only thanks to dreams that she even remembered what they had talked about, or at least it was only when morning came and the police found the engagement ring and its box covered in ashes. 

“I don’t know…” Becky mumbled into the ground. She had work but no excuse would have been enough because she took days off for less important reasons. “I don’t know why I didn’t come with her.”

_I wanted to be responsible. I just ended up being selfish._

“I thought so.” Sasha scoffed, disentangling herself from Becky’s grip with a volatile force, spinning to walk towards the parking, her steps more resentful than they have been. 

“It’s not _my_ fault!” Becky’s loud baritone echoed against the occupied hall, everyone glancing at them for a quick second until their several tragedies had tossed themselves back into their minds and so they proceeded to mind their own business. “The man in there, that just pleaded guilty. That’s who _you_ should be angry with.”

Sasha just kept walking. She had found out about Ronda’s intention to marry her just as soon as she found out that that same woman was dead. 

“It’s your fault too you know!” Becky continued to scream, and her throat was already scratched out from days of abuse. 

_It’s your fault too. She loved you._

But Sasha had already covered the ears of her heart. She was _not_ going to listen.

* * *

_I'm nobody too._

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Called Back by Amanda Lovelace


	4. Letter to My Future Lover

* * *

**Letter to My** ~~**Future**~~ **Lover**

* * *

_you are the faint line_

* * *

The streets are always unusually happy after a loss. It hadn’t even been fresh but the judge’s sentence felt like the closing of a chapter that hadn’t even begun. They were big girls living in a bigger city, much, much different from the town she and Ronda had met each other in. It was bustling on some parts, rotting on the other; every person didn’t know the other person that they could’ve bumped into.

And Becky thought that although they had looked at it with wide-eyed adventure before, staring up at skyscrapers as if they had been right there at the top - she thought that, well, big cities could also make people feel so, _damn_ , small. 

As she drove around in circles, off of the main roads because no one else but herself deserved the fury of sightless hate, Becky eventually- weirdly, oddly, strangely found herself in front of Ron- Sasha’s house.

The puddle of water plopped from under her shoes as she didn’t notice that the gravel wasn’t as smooth as she remembered. Droplets of water slid down from her crystal-polished shoes as it took her towards the front door. In autopilot, knocking and knocking.

Even though a part of her knew that she didn’t have the right.

Meek footsteps approached the door, opening it startlingly abrupt. In the split-second before Sasha had hid her face and tried to close the door whereas Becky had wedged her shoe to keep it open, Becky had seen that her eyes were pale and red. Possibly reflecting the blaze of her own.

“Wait…” Becky propped her body between the door. Sasha had only spent half of her strength trying to close it. “...I- I’m grieving too.”

Defeatedly, Sasha had let go of the door and turned her back on Becky, hiding her face through her unkempt hair. It has been hours since the sentencing and she hasn’t even changed into house clothing. Becky remembered the girl so different from what she had seen. 

But alongside the tears that weren’t there and the dead air of the house, an unmaintained mess had awaited Becky. The faucet was leaking and garbage was all over the place - and she wasn’t sure if the heater was working either and instantaneously she had to wonder how long Sasha had weathered the unbearable cold.

An anvil sank deep into her own stomach, as she slid from the wall beside Sasha, collapsing into the same fetal position as the mourning woman.

“I tried.” Sasha sharply sucked in the little of what’s left in the apartment’s air. “I tried to fix it, but… the water just kept leaking.”

Her voice was barely above a whisper, soft as a heartbeat, and Becky _understood_. “She’s been gone that long huh.” 

Frankly, the entire house was a mess. And it said a lot for something to be a sight for sore eyes if Becky had been the one evaluating it. Clothes were thrown clumsily in a claustrophobic little corner, as if Sasha did not want to touch anything that had Ronda’s handprints all over it. She looked at Sasha and the crease on her face did not exactly explain the kind of pain that would cause a woman to let ghosts wander in the same place that they lie. 

“I’ll fix it.” Becky offered.

* * *

_between faith and_

* * *

Sasha came into Ronda’s life looking like everything she didn’t know she even wanted. The summer that they had started to get closer, Becky didn’t understand this. And as she wasn’t a stranger to her best friend’s phases, she understood that while Ronda’s feelings are very real, they could very well be fleeting. Just as everything, except for the two of them.

The first step to accepting the seriousness of it all was a lot of months after the evening when Ronda had told her about Sasha. 

Suffice to say that in practical matters… such as sex, the two have been compared to a lion and a hyena; first comes the appetite, because, in reality, fuck the feelings. In the past, navigating old environments where they’ve cycled through club regulars like they were on a schedule, they’ve mostly had to stay separate. God forbid that casanovas knew each other. _What_ would the girls _think_? They have steamrolled through a pile of bodies like they had been casualties of war, every person nameless. 

But people had an appetite for variety, that much Becky knew. So even after everything said within that park, Becky had humored Ronda and humored her well. Until a good few months had passed and the phase had gone for far too long.

They both sat at the back of the concert hall, as the event slowly concluded with the tiny, microphone-amplified voice of Ronda’s girlfriend - who had organized the event.

Becky cleared her throat, leaning forward with her fists boredly wrapped around the theater seat’s armrest, attempting to catch the attention of her lovestruck friend who had been staring at dead air with a ridiculously wide and toothy grin. “So… what’s up? Good sex?”

Without staring back at Becky, Ronda replied, “No. Man. _Fantastic_ sex.”

Becky narrowed her eyes, leaning further towards Ronda, letting her nosiness be known in the anxious tapping of her loud boots. 

And Ronda, shot her the weirdest glare. “Not _you_ . I’m not gonna’ fucking kiss and tell. No. Not with _you_ , Rebecca.” 

“Oh _come on_ , that’s the hugest fucking lie since they told ya’ bout’ the moon landing.” 

“That’s _my girlfriend_ you idiot, I’m not gonna’ let your dirty ass brain wander off in places it’s not supposed to go.” Ronda huffed, seasick disgust coloring her face with the brighter shades of crimson. “And you _do know_ that the moon landing is real, you seriously _can’t_ be _that_ much of an idiot, right?”

“First of all,” Becky steeled herself and squared her shoulders. “You can’t fool me, I’ve seen the videos and the lighting was way off. Second? Your girlfriend, no offense Ronnie, isn’t my type-”

Ronda scoffed, “Is she breathing? Does she wear skirts? _Then_ she’s definitely up your alley.”

“ _But_ as _I_ was going to say, that you’re starting to sound like her,” Becky slowed her words. Ronda was certainly a territorial person, but it was never in respect to other people. “You guys seem like you’re getting serious, huh?” 

“Hah… yeah.” And all of a sudden, the grin had found its way back into Ronda’s face, the previously angry flush settling into a pinkish calm. “Actually… it wasn’t _just_ fantastic sex, I mean I guess it was amazing and all but, it was her and I’s first.”

Ronda mentioned a couple more things, mostly about how much it meant to her but that she could see how much more it meant to Sasha - and at one point when Becky was only half-listening, she may have heard something related to a metaphor about the April _fucking_ moon. Except that it had been months into their relationship and Ronda often secured whatever it was that wasn’t making love just a couple of days into dating a person.

Immediately, Becky knew that things were different. And Ronda couldn’t shut up about the emotional implication of it all, none of which really told Becky anything but the fact that the sun now rises and sets on the ground that Sasha walked on. 

Because she saw everything, how people become completely different once they have decided that they care - the life they leave behind and the risks that they take. Becky had lived content about the knowledge that she may never see past people and their utility, but to _be fair_ , Becky had never been alone in the acceptance that she will never love like they do in the movies. But Ronda sat in front of her, with wide-eyes and a beating heart, as she and Sasha locked eyes from a couples of miles away like they had been the only people in the room. 

And _maybe_ , it made Becky feel a little bit isolated.

* * *

Finding out that you can get almost kicked out for neglecting classes was something Becky learned the hard way. After skipping almost about every subject remotely related to math and communications, Becky had her mouth dripping with soliloquies that begged for her to stay and her head with calculations of which subjects would have curbed and allowed her to pass. 

“One week, fuck! That’s a _long_ time before you could get those results back.” Ronda hit the steering wheel with the bottom of her palm as she frustratedly pulled over by the side of the road. “How could you fucking miss your physical exam and drug test, they were on different dates!”

“Look, fuck! I was hangin’ out with some of the others and they hotboxed the room okay? It wasn’t even my fault, I had to delay the drug test.” She huffed in a quick explanation. “Just- fuck! I know I’m sorry okay, M’not even gonna’ bother you with my shit.”

Ronda eased her breath, her brows raised against Becky. “Seriously?”

“I mean, I could just do it y’know? People do it all the time. I have a plan, I think I’ve already thought this through.” Nodding to herself, Becky’s clutch against the edge of her seat had tightened. “I’ll go get a job and work my way up, then maybe a couple of years in I could just return to college- or not… but I think I’ll make it.”

Truthfully, Becky made a lot of excuses and Ronda had only responded by staring her off into nonsense.

“Look.” Ronda’s frown deepened. “Me not helping you is out of the question.” 

Of course, Becky got her chance with the university administration and academe. Everybody loved a good sob story. If she had known that she was extremely effective at acting, she swore that her Friday-night act around the clubs and bars around the city could have levelled towards Hollywood - or maybe a community theater. Nevertheless, within the infinite amount of wake up calls that Becky has had in her life, possibly inclusive of a near-death experience, this was the pivot by which she decided to re-define ‘making life one’s bitch’.

She learned a couple of things from then on. That she absolutely _hated_ her degree but was above decent at it. That she wished that she had entered college with a specific passion. That she had a nose for where money goes. That Ronda’s actual, _serious_ girlfriend was good at accounting… and maybe that Becky only started to understand what Ronda saw in Sasha.

Half of the library lights were already closed by around seven in evening, and unfortunately, Becky had been planted in her seat for more than a couple of hours already - merely living for quick bathroom breaks and bouts of frustration. Better storm off, come back; wash, rinse, repeat rather than actually tear the thick accounting book that sat in front of her.

“If I could just eliminate _one_ thing from my entire fuckin’ existence, it’s this math bullshit.” Becky stormed back into the table with an incredibly frustrated glare and flared up nostrils, almost tossing the chair aside as she pulled it to squeeze herself back into the table. 

“It’s kinda funny that you wouldn’t like accounting, it’s pretty simple.” Sasha sat back, briefly stretching as she had been stuck tutoring Becky at Ronda’s request for more than an hour now. “You’re usually so good at remembering how much people owe you and where your money goes.”

Becky stared at Sasha dumbfounded.

“That’s basically what accounting is! The money flows and you just have to make sure that it goes in the right places.”

Almost blurting out a ‘that’s-what-she-said’ joke, Becky settled for a tired chuckle, briefly yawning as she saw Sasha cross out several jargons in the activity sheet and replace them with either names of people they knew or simple explanations - spinning a table of academic words into story. And as Becky struggled to progress, Sasha learned that Becky learned best through anger - fuming at the amount of money that she had to pay people.

And though miscalculations were made every step of the way, Becky started to learn the basics. Sasha saw this as success. 

Last calls were made as the staff patrolled around the library to make sure no one was left in the cold and empty halls. The two rushed towards the elevator, only hearing the alert via the nearby radio - heart pounding fast from the prospect of being stuck in a place that was full of books with no pictures, at least for Becky.

A strong gust of cool wind hit them in the face as the elevator opened, walking out towards the campus gate at an exhausted pace. 

“Where you off to now?” Becky casually said, stopping by the gate, hands in her pocket. 

Sasha was arranging her books from inside of her bag when she noticed how crisp Becky’s voice was when she wasn’t yelling or fooling around other people. Prior to the entire tutoring fiasco, the two had barely talked beyond usual pleasantries. Sasha was comfortable sticking next to Ronda and disappearing within herself for times that Ronda had left to get something, and Becky was perfectly content to be minding her own business. 

Frankly, it gave Sasha a stop - unknowing of how mild-mannered a person could be when they’re desperate for a change in direction. She smiled. “I’m heading over to Ronda’s condo.”

As she scratched her head, Becky hesitated briefly, tiptoeing to speak such an unusual language from her lips. _Thanks_. “I’ll walk you there.”

* * *

_blindly waiting_

* * *

Becky didn’t know how bad it would be as she roamed around the house looking for Ronda’s toolbox. Laundry festered on top of an overflowing basket and dust had already settled in corners that looked like they were supposedly inhabited. The dishes had piled up beside the broken sink, and although they barely had much of a food stain, which was alarming altogether - they were left unwashed. 

Her back was turned against Sasha as it all sank in, because the other woman’s cheeks had slightly caved in as eyebags swelled from underneath her eyes beyond the layers of concealer that she had put for the court session. 

“So how have you been doing?” Becky echoed from underneath the sink, opening up the cupboard to check the tubes. “Anything new you’ve been up to or-”

“We never called a plumber.” Sasha pulled her face out from her forearms as she sat still against the wall, cradling herself in a fetal position. “Ro- She always fixes the sink. It’s funny, _that one_ , having the affinity to keep on breaking.” 

Becky cracked a small, shadowed smile. “Well. She learned that from me.” 

_You learned that from her_. Sasha coughed out a giggle, which quickly died as soon as it fell out of her lips. “She liked to tell me about that.”

“She liked to tell _everyone_ about that. _God_ , if Ronnie wasn’t the biggest douchebag on earth.” Becky had stopped for a while, losing herself and her grip of the wrench in hand as memories played out from the back of her head. It was laughter and laughter and laughter and trouble. But for some reason, she hated how vividly Ronda’s mischievous grin burned at the back of her head. “It’s my first skill, y’know? Back in Dublin, my grandpa thought I could be his plumbing successor and I just honestly liked tinkering as an eight year old. I kinda' miss him actually, I wish he came with me going here.”

“Yeah,” Sasha said blankly, staring into the wall, and looking- imagining the house before it became the pile of rubble that they used to call home. When it wasn’t scattered clothes and unorganized DVDs. “Mario- was it?”

“Now _that_ was a lie.” Becky always hated the long-running joke that Ronda invented that supplicated the tall tales of Becky’s origins. It was funny, how sad amusing lies could get so quick. And maybe that was the bitter part of nostalgia; happy memories viewed from the perspective that things will never be the same again. “But my grand papa was a plumber, and I do it sometimes to help me with my love life. So what right? Like, nobody’s perfect.” 

“ _She_ was.” 

And it was something with how abrupt Sasha had said it that drove a pang down Becky’s gut, it was as if they had been words locked from under her tongue, refusing to ever get out. 

She.

_Was._

“Sasha…” This time, Becky tilted her head to check up on Sasha after an abrupt silence, and open-eyed tears had spilled out so involuntarily down the other woman’s cheeks. It wouldn’t stop, as if its source had finally been punctured after weeks and weeks of restraint. Becky immediately dropped everything she was holding and slowly walked towards Sasha.

Choked sobs escaped out of her mouth as if, all this time, she had been breathing smoke.

“I… can’t live here anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Letter to my future lover by Rupi Kaur


	5. What I told the doctors

**What I told the doctors**

* * *

_the eyes are not reliable. not windows. not mirrors._

_my ears have eroded, leaving two broken telephones._

* * *

That night, she could distinctly, so vividly and so animatedly remember, that that night she drove and she drove. Knuckles shaking with a disoriented head too unfit to figure out just where exactly it was that Ronda could have been. She remembered, thinking that she couldn’t do it, silvery tears having flown past her cheeks as her ears and car windows remained open to tune into any sign of commotion around the place Ronda last said she was at.

She traced the route from the jewelry shop to her house. And it was difficult, like retracing a tragedy, reliving the few moments of Ronda’s life: her fingers ghosting over the box of an engagement ring, her heart beating so fast that it could get to Sasha faster than her car would have, just… imagining and laying out the patterns of what a married life was going to be like.

And in the short moment before she got to the wreckage, Ronda’s future flashed before Becky’s eyes.

Because she knew that it wouldn’t be too long until she’s asked to be the best woman, and she would’ve accepted. Immediately. Just as she knew Sasha would have accepted that proposal from where she stood. Immediately. 

It would have been a lovely family, because they’re the couple to settle in. Their house, she could already tell that the two would have opted to live where it’s quiet, a moderately-sized mansion with wooden floors that announced their presence. And the kids would have hated her, until they realized how aunt Becky was actually cool and could teach them a thing or two about surviving. 

When Becky arrived at the tragic scene, the ambulance was just arriving, a thickening crowd pooled around them as she held Ronda by the shoulders. Blood had dried from her forehead, crusting, alongside a smithereen of glass that was coarse against Becky’s palms. 

That moment, she was almost glad that her best friend and Sasha didn’t have kids. Because, how does she force young faces to understand death before they had even understood falling in love? How does she explain that they had to cover their eyes because Ronda didn’t look the same anymore. And no matter how much they call their mother, nobody’s going to answer. 

Her grime-filled hands shaking as they were, Becky still had to do one last thing.

* * *

Sasha arrived at the bar, and the cops were already hours into the crime scene. But she didn’t know that. She was met with a far-end stare and uneasy fingers shaking against a charred jewelry box, that once might have been called velvet. The text had been so cryptic, just a command and an address. It wasn’t uncommon for Ronda to be out in the middle of the night, or to throw random surprises.

But Becky had texted and for that one time Sasha didn’t want to guess the antics the two were up to, she felt like her stomach could rise to her throat. She neared the table where Becky was slumped which had been a far cry to the woman who walked about with a high chin and squared shoulders.

“Becky?” She searched the woman’s eyes for an answer, a tell to reveal the practical joke. “What’s up?”

And when she couldn’t look at Sasha as a hot tear blatantly fell towards the table, Sasha could almost feel her heart stop. “Wh-... where is…?”

“Sash…” Becky’s tone wavered, her legs growing more numb as her fingers tried to comb through the tatters of the jewelry box. 

“Where’s Ronda?” Her wide-eyed nervousness was met with silence and eyes that seem to never leave the box that Becky’s hand held. And she held her breath, repeating, “Becky. Where’s Ronda?”

Beaten out by exhaustion, Becky opened her mouth towards a thin-lipped confession. Unsure of where to start but to swallow, and maybe, just tell everything that happened the way that she’s experienced it. Sasha had always been the smarter one. Maybe _she_ would be able to sort it out. Because God knows that she can’t. “We were on a call when it happened. She wanted to, I was asking her to- well… goddammit. Fuck!”

“When _what_ happened?” Unaware that her lungs needed air when she held her breath for what seemed like an eternity, Sasha took a sharp inhale and it never seemed to be enough. “Becky. When. What. Happened?”

“Answer me.” Sasha sterned. “Please. When _what_ happened?”

But she already felt like she knew, at the back of her head, she knew. And she wished that Ronda had been a cheater, a murderer, a liar, anything other than what could have been the worst.

“I tried Sasha. I _tried_. To get to her before the ambulance did, to find her. To _fucking_ … be there to let her know it was going to be fine! To f-” Her breath hitched, unable to swallow the growing lump that’s clogging the back of her throat. “To just… _fucking_ … at least hear out what she has to say if it was really the end.”

None of them would ever remember the words exchanged afterwards, or if there was any at all. But Becky was sure that it was within that old pub that cold shudders crept up her skin from the inexplicably grief-stricken anger that clouded Sasha’s eyes. She was sure. That in that pub, the wind whistled through the cracks in the walls and she could break into a thousand pieces just seeing Sasha look away from the pathetic excuse of a box that she pushed from her end of the table to Sasha’s.

Because when Sasha opened the supposed engagement ring. It felt like everything clicked and came undone all at once.

 _You’re lying._

All she saw was Ronda. 

And she couldn’t look at it.

* * *

_my hands have embraced what they always have been;_

_two grasping panics, two torches to everything I love._

* * *

It had been the second week that Sasha found herself waking up to the cool, sunlit afternoons in Ronda’s condo, hair plastered to her cheeks from cold sweat. The place being situated beside the university made it extremely convenient to visit during her breaks. Only downside to it being the muffled sound of thunderous drums that boasted of the university’s cheer squad just literally two hundred feet below them. 

“Hey... go back to sleep.” Ronda’s soft and groggy voice competed with the slight buzz of her room’s air conditioner. It sounded exactly like Sasha’s nerves trying to pull themselves awake. 

Her back stiff from having fallen asleep on Ronda’s desk, on top of a pile of worksheets that did not have anything to do with Sasha’s grade, Sasha attempted to straighten herself as she fought the massive yawn and the even bigger temptation that beckoned her back to sleep. “Shoot… what time is it?” 

Ronda chuckled lightly, noticing her girlfriend make a subtle attempt to wipe the dampness from the corner of her mouth. “Looks like someone was dreaming about me. I’m just right over here, you know?” 

“I dreamt about your minors. Tell me again how it’s the easy ones you’re having trouble with?”

“It’s hard to focus.” Ronda patted the side of her bed, motioning for Sasha to come closer. The act completely missed though as Sasha started to lazily put on her shoes and take her jacket from the chair. “Damnit, leaving so soon?”

“I have a class!” 

“See, you doing my shit is taking away from Ronnie-Sasha time. It’s not fair.” Flashing an exaggerated pout, Ronda struggled to get up, ensuring that the cast wrapped around her elbow doesn’t hit anything as she walked towards Sasha to envelop her into an unbelievably tight one-armed hug. 

“Jeez! I know that you’re still strong okay!” Sasha laughed in between bated breath, slowly releasing herself from the injured, but still incredibly smug student-athlete who somehow managed to transform into a puppy when she’s on bed rest. “Look, I’ll come back whenever I can. But I’m still not done with your Genders essay, so you’re just gonna have to settle with comfortable silence” 

“I keep telling you, you don’t have to do it. I’m me and you _know_ they’re gonna give me a pass.”

Raised brows, Sasha’s head tilted to the side in a ‘come on now’ look that perfected playful disappointment. “And I’m me, and I hate it when they give you a pass.”

“It shouldn’t work like that.” She muttered.

And such was the line where their mutual affinity for each other started. Ronda would admit it to anyone who would ask, but Sasha’s bold approach to fairness that starkly contrasted her coy approach to life had her smitten. Previously huddled in the shadow of a life that literally everybody else lives, Ronda’s just thankful that the first stars appeared in the sky when she’s gotte-n to know Sasha.

Sasha would say the same. Color had never felt so different when she woke to a world that is a little less big than it had been. “What are you staring at?”

“Nothing,” Ronda shook her head to take herself out of a very particular trance, eyes shifting towards her shuffling feet. “I love you.”

* * *

As Sasha left for the door after a peck that unsurprisingly graduated into a deep kiss, Ronda watched her pensively. And, _maybe_ , she thought that maybe, her mind’s made up.

Sasha didn’t live _too_ far from the university, but it was far enough to merit worry lines under Ronda’s eyes for times that she couldn’t bring her girlfriend home.

“I can do it, I’ve been doing it all these years,” she might have once insisted. But the short and prompt, and very effective argument of ‘you never know’ had always shot right out of Ronda’s mouth. 

After changing into her bedtime clothes, Ronda gazed upon the open sky, as it had started to pour angry rain towards the ground as if the gods descended with a lecture; every shop and bright-lit establishments dimmed by the melancholic torrent. “Think it’s made a decision for you, the weather says that you stay.”

“Fine,” Sasha mumbled and sat herself back to the dining chair, deftly removing her shoes once again to pace back towards the edge of Ronda’s bed. She sighed heavily, with a rough estimate of how much this delay would have affected tomorrow’s schedule. “Two hours. It should be calmer by then.”

“Babe it’s fucking one in the morning in two hours.” Ronda’s eyes narrowed in disbelief as she carefully sat up, keen to keep her right elbow in place.

“You can count,” Sasha deadpanned. “I’m so proud of you.” 

“Wow, alright boss, you’re forgetting that _I’m_ the one who’s supposed to have a hothead. Do you know how much this hurts?” She motioned towards her cast, lifting it a little and dramatically scrunching her face at the act. “Ow! If anything, you’re supposed to take care of me and stay the night.”

“Two hours.” 

“I’ll bring you home first thing in the morning.” Ronda insisted. “Look at the weather Sash _that_ doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.”

“Two hours.” 

“What do you have to do anyway? I’m sure we could work something out.”

“Two hours.”

“Stay?”

Of course the insistence ran for a bit longer, even past the time Sasha had found herself shyly laid down on the edge of Ronda’s bed, a leg to the floor, too cautious to overstep her boundaries. But the rain kept pouring and the hours quickly doubled, until the girl was fast asleep. 

Still riddled with thoughts about the infinite, something that has been more recurring the more that she had to remain in bed looking at nothing else but the windows and the ceiling, Ronda was wide awake. She took the opportunity to struggle through repositioning Sasha into a more comfortable face as she stared at the outlines and the trenches of her forehead.

Even in Sasha’s dream, she always seemed like she had been working day and night. 

_Stay?_ Ronda muttered to herself, the next few thoughts lingering at the back of her tongue as her mind attempted to get used to the idea. _Forever?_

* * *

_feet - nothing more than two rocks some days._

_ & my heart has developed a kind of amnesia, where it remembers everything but itself. _

* * *

_I’ve aged so much_ , Sasha reflected as she ran her fingers through large eyebags and tousled. Between the carcass of a reflection and the carcass of tattered velvet in front of her, her fingers felt numb as if she was not existing. 

Footsteps ascended, drawing closer to her ear, and suddenly she felt like she wanted to cover her face. Cover the bags, the wrinkles, the dry skin, the blemishes, but most of all, cover all the misery that had taken away irreplaceable years and people.

“That’s okay.” Becky rumbled, and even the woman who was only a familiar stranger to Sasha prior to the accident, didn’t sound like she had slept in years.. “Love does that. It grips you and wastes you away, until nothing else matters.” 

Sasha let out a mirthless chuckle. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought that they were still young and Becky was spiteful of all the time with Ronda that Sasha took away from her. “Loss does that, it kills every part of you that has loved and hoped.”

“Even the lashes.” She added, lamenting how just weary her eyes had looked like for the last few months without makeup. 

“Youthful lashes or not,” Becky protested, hesitantly stepping away from the doorframe and deeper inside the room. “You still would have been a Rousey.”

 _Don’t say that_ , Sasha shot Becky a glare that dug from beneath her stomach. Because _who_ was Becky to pick at fresh wounds. 

“I didn’t understand it at first.” Becky proceeded to sit by the bedside of Sasha’s and Ronda’s room, the other woman unflinching as she continued to stare at Becky from the mirror. “Ronnie and I, we were storm chasers, running towards one disaster after the other that could have made us feel a little bit more alive.”

It was true. Stunned from where she sat, Sasha’s mind so carelessly drifted back to the first time she met Ronda. It was funny, it did seem like it had been yesterday. The smell of sweat and party vividly burning at the back of her head. 

“I used to- I… was mad at you you know.” Becky confessed, head tilted low as she stared at her feet instead of Sasha. “Back then I feel like you took her away, and then it just kept happening.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nah, I’ve gotten over it.” She waved off. “Until much recently at least. In this tiny little head of mine I felt like if it weren’t for you, Ronda wouldn’t have died. But I think that… deep down if it weren’t for you she wouldn’t have truly lived.”

Self-pity quickly shifted into pity, Sasha’s eyes fell towards her lap, acutely aware that Becky was just as lost as she was. For a good while when Becky was just _that friend,_ Sasha’s always had a gnawing suspicion of the girl’s distaste. She had initially avoided Becky for as much as Becky would only throw her a, ‘oh just another one of them’ look. 

It wasn’t until Becky was failing and Sasha had helped that things started clicking. Like Ronda no longer had to pick between them. But Sasha wasn’t going to lie, a small part - a really, tiny, repressed part of her tasted bitterness at the cordiality only being a result of her utility.

Because if there was a person that convinced her that there was a person inside of her that was valuable not just for what she did, it was Becky’s best friend.

“Well,” Becky pierced through the pensive silence that settled on top of the room’s thick, suffocating air. “All I really wanted to say is. Thank you, for making Ronnie as happy as no one else could’ve made her. And that… I’m sorry for the jacket.” She shifted out of the bed and walked slowly towards the door, almost feeling like she should regret having opened her mouth in the first place.

“Wait.” Sasha hesitated, slowly rising from the chair that sat in front of the vanity mirror. She hadn’t even noticed that her eyes had blurred up with tears that were too stubborn to fall. She paced towards Becky as the other woman turned, still unable to make eye contact. 

But she wrapped her arms around Becky, though her frail body couldn’t fully do it at a level of strength that would have warmed a full-sized adult, she didn’t care. “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poem is What i told the doctors by Benaim Sabrina, thank you for reading <3


	6. Glass, Blood, and Ash

* * *

**Glass, Blood, and Ash**

* * *

I do not want to wear that dress again.

I do not want to kiss him, I do not want

to know what a prince tastes like. I do not want

to hear the castle doors shut behind me.

* * *

It was the middle of autumn, and temperatures had just started to creep lower, trees almost fully barren without the song of the late summer. Just the perfect excuse to stay in bed, the perfect period of calm just before holiday season starts flooding into the city with the noisiest sounds of the year. 

“Sasha,” Hot breath blew against Sasha’s cold cheeks, substituting what was supposed a weekday alarm and replacing it with a Saturday annoyance. “Sasha.” She felt a poke on her rib that dangerously bordered on the soft spot that was her waist, effectively jolting her awake.

“Go away!” She almost flailed and screamed with the rasp and stubbornness of an afternoon treated like it was morning. Eyes squinted, she could barely see the blurred outline of a woman in a tank top, but the scent of cocoa from the cups set were too strong to ignore. She rubbed her eyes to force herself awake, wiping fresh drool from the corner of her mouth. “I’m so tired.”

Handing her a cup of hot chocolate, Ronda sat next to Sasha and kissed her temple, receiving a drowsy peck on the lips from her Sasha. “Babe. Breath.” 

Instinctively covering her mouth, Sasha soon realized that she wasn’t supposed to care. Between the two of them, Ronda had never complained much about anything, especially not about a flaw that she didn’t have. A sharp slap landed on top of Ronda’s shoulders as Sasha sat her cup down at the end table, causing the other woman to burst into a poorly restrained giggle. “Fuck! I hate you.” 

“Language.” 

“You say fuck all the time?” 

“I do.” Ronda proudly grinned. “But if we’re going to have kids, one of us is gonna’ have to be the role model. Now I don’t want mini, three-year-old Ronda's flailing about the house asking. ‘Mommy, what is fuck?’ And me making up a stupid substitute, like, ‘Oh honey, it’s what people say when they love each other’. And the next thing you’ll know is that you have a kid running around the suburb yelling fuck fuck fuck.”

“Well fuck kids.” Sasha grumbled into sipping her cup. “Fuck work, fuck weekdays, fuck this house, fuck every barista out there that adds an extra H to both our names every time I order past midnight, fuck e-”

A swift hand covered Sasha’s mouth as Ronda tried her bestest to keep with the act. “Now, _you,_ Shasha Banks, sound like whatever mini Ronda’s going to be. Nuh-uh, we can’t have that.”

As a response, Sasha merely raised a middle finger.

It was one of those days, both had presumed, separately and quietly, where they danced around the discussion of a future. Ronda jokes, and Sasha rides the jests - never responding in a definitive manner; because, _to be fair_ , Ronda jokes far too much. She would only ever joke or suggest, laying out the options to gauge Sasha’s interest.

In a way, it has become a crutch.

In a way, Sasha has noticed it. So maybe this time, she acts.

“I don’t mind it, you know?” She says in between the sipping noises and lowly television sounds that rose from down the stairs. She paused, unsure of whether or not she really wanted to say what she was about to. It wasn’t _big_ , per say, but it had big implications, she thought. 

“Mind?” Ronda straightened up, smiling eyes widening and her lips involuntarily relaxing. “Mind what?”

“Some mini Ronda running amok cussing fuck fuck fuck.” She knew what she said. _I don’t mind starting a life with you._ “Because I’m sure that whatever this kid will be, they’ll be likened after the best person that I know.” 

Ronda, was of course, speechless, a bead of sweat forming at the right side of her temple as the temperature grew absurdly humid. “A-hah… going soft on me now, are you?”

“Shut up before I take it back.” 

“You won’t.” Ronda dared, her face inching closer to Sasha, first as a jest, face still hot with the unnerving boundary that she had started to tread. 

“I will.” Sasha raised her brows, brash with the confidence of a person who’s had almost a full day of sleep. “We’ve been here before.” 

“You will.” 

Their eyes met as Sasha accidentally stared right into Ronda’s. And things like these, though it may not be the first time, happen slow. Ronda leaned in for a kiss, a hand gliding up to cup Sasha’s face as the other found the small of her back, pulling her closer, deeper. To which Sasha responded to, kissing back, and allowing herself to be enveloped by the warmth of her girlfriend’s strong arms.

Ronda lifted her up ever so slightly, placing themselves in the middle of the mattress. She once again captured Sasha’s lips, eliciting soft breathing as they descended into the headboard and then down towards the pillow. 

Both of her hands now landing on Sasha’s hips, as she sat herself on her legs, Ronda’s hand slid up her waist from underneath her shirt and towards the sides of her chest, kissing newly exposed skin as her lips trailed higher and higher. She neared the bottom of her chest and stopped briefly, once again moving towards her girlfriend’s lips to kiss the corner of her mouth, and then the other, seemingly lingering to ask for permission.

These things happen slowly.

Because at one point they looked like they were about to start the day off like a dreamy weekend, and then Ronda had abruptly stopped. 

Sasha looked at Ronda who had perched herself on top of Sasha’s hips quizzically, searching for a sign of anything going awry. She could feel Ronda’s pulse from where she lay, beating at a record speed. “Teddy?”

“Are you okay?”

Her girlfriend’s face had flushed even redder than usual. “I…” She trailed off. “I never knew what the right time for things like this were. To be honest, I never know how to do any of these things. But I did- I...”

“What’s wrong?”

“I… googled how it works and I didn’t find anything that’s fitting.” She rolled out of the bed slowly, palms massaging the sides of her face and it looked like she was slapping herself back into reality. She walked slowly, towards the coat hanger, pulling something out of her leather jacket’s pocket. “There’s just so many ways on how to do it and I know you deserve way more than this... It’s just that, I want to be selfish and I don’t want to wait anymore.” 

Sasha held her breath, creeping realization blossomed from the back of her head. _No…_

Ronda pulled out a tattered, velvet box, and and knelt. Sirens made themselves known as if they had rung from a faraway city - inching closer by the second.

“Sasha.”

_Don’t say it._

“Please stay with me.” She started to open the box.

 _No_. 

_Somebody wake me up._

“Forever.” 

_Wake me up._

* * *

Shrill, inaudible noise pierced from upstairs, shaking still birds out of thick branches. Her legs were numb from sleeping on a couch too small for her frame, and nevertheless, the scream had woken up every nerve in Becky’s body.

She shot up to the stairs, skipping a step, two steps, a half step, and almost falling down in the process until she pushed the door to Sasha’s bedroom wide open. She couldn’t explain the adrenaline but there was something about screams and cries and agony that she’s had enough of… and was too familiar with.

If horrible breathing was anything to go by, the deep creases on Becky’s forehead contorted when she was met with bloodshot, glassy eyes and deep eyebags; the woman in front of her clutching her blanket to her chest - as if she wanted to stop some sort of pang.

“I’m sorry.” Sasha mumbled in between quiet hiccups - or sobs, possibly the latter. “Was just dreaming.”

Becky was frozen by the doorframe, clutching the wall for support. She had seen this before, and it felt like she was watching how it had looked like on nights where she would jolt awake to the sound of glass shattering. “I-is it Ronnie?”

Sasha didn’t respond. She only laid back so vulnerably, using the headrest for support as she almost covered her entire face with a blanket. Fluid swelling from beneath her eyelids.

“It’s okay.” Becky rasped. “I get em’ too.”

She only got a cutting, pained stare from Sasha, but she knew what it was all along. They came from nothing and Ronda had saved them, but she shouldn’t have if it would only end up the way it did.

She knew what Sasha meant.

_I shouldn’t have loved her._

But she wanted to ask. She so badly wanted to ask. She knew that they had suffered, just never this similarly. Becky wanted to open her mouth from where she stood, and ask, _What were your dreams like?_

 _Was she happy?_ _Was there no blood in her face?_

_Me? My dreams were about all the times that I wish I could have given back._

“You’re still here.” Sasha finally spoke, slowly scooching over to sit at her own bedside, lifting the blanket out of her quivering legs. 

“Oh? Yeah,” Becky scratched her head, looking away. Adrenaline has already dissipated as her heart rate began to relax into erratic beating. There was something about the sight that was too private. Like it had been a moment between Sasha and R-her memories that she had intruded. She only realized it now, too, so she backed by a single step, leaning against the wall beside the door frame, outside of the room. “I was just about to leave... I’m sorry, I fell asleep before noticing the time.”

Becky took a deep breath, her fists balled into a type of emotion that she wasn’t sure was just yet. Embarrassment possibly. Intrusion. Or maybe loss. Shaking any kind of feeling off of her shoulders, she dug deep into her pocket and braced to leave, descending down the staircase one step at a time. “If-if you need anything done, don’t hesitate to call.” She hoped her voice was firm and loud enough to echo back into the bedroom.

* * *

_I never wanted it. I only wanted_

_to stand in that torchlight for a second_

_and feel as you must always feel._

* * *

Growing up isn’t easy, and by that, Becky meant that it’s hard to accept that things and people age around her. Drastically, and very quickly, leather jackets were worn less and less and beautifully unkempt hair demanded to get brushed over. Meetings were sparse too, it was no longer long motorcycle rides or drunken nights at Ronda’s car; just stale coffee shop mornings and jazz bar nights.

They haven’t even been to thirty and things have already felt like they have settled.

“Hey fuckboy,” Becky’s oxfords clicked against the carpet, absorbing the sound of hard-hitting wood against tiles, much to her dismay. But the swagger carried once she crossed past the single seater that Ronda sat on, landing a heavy-handed pat against the back of her head as she sat in the opposite chair. 

“Ooh,” Ronda batted her eyelashes, feigning cross-legged demureness as Becky got herself settled. “You lookin’ good. All this for me? Gee. I’m flattered.”

“Shit,” Becky humored Ronda, shaking her head with a smile that almost reached her own ears as she pulled out a small gift box from her messenger bag. “Happy birthday motherfucker. There better be strippers next time.” 

“ _You_ know there wouldn’t. But I can always get you a personal one. Kinda under the budget next year though.” Ronda smirked to herself. She would be thirty “How’d you feel about some bitch with a couple of her teeth loose?”

“Listen here you little shit. I said strippers, not hookers.”

“I’m way too wholesome to know the difference.”

The downside to celebrating early, is that they got to pick the day of the birthday. Of course, it is no longer a question for every single cog in the workforce that Friday would be the most appropriate option. And, _God_ , if the lounge wasn’t crowded by men who were twice their age, Becky would have felt a lot better having to adjust their tradition. 

For the last decade, it didn’t matter if it was a blizzard, a hurricane, or the hottest day of the year. If Becky or Ronda’s birthday fell on a Tuesday, they celebrated on a Tuesday.

But, things change. People fall in love, and people inch close to settling. 

“So, twenty-nine.” Becky raised a chilled glass of expensive brandy, the faint scent of cinnamon lingering in the air although her lips had not yet touched the liquor. “The living proof, ladies and gents that bad weeds never die.” 

“Twenty-nine.” Ronda took it all in, a glass raised for herself to collide against Becky’s.

They toasted in the smoky lounge, a cigar laid out at the table, as Becky sat her drink down and lit a churchill for herself, offering Ronda a puff of the imported tobacco. “It’s your last year as a happy young adult, have you got any plans yet?”

“Don’t tell Sasha or you’re dead. I can make it look like an accident.” Ronda reached out and took a puff for herself, strange familiarity washing over her taste buds. “But speaking of plans… well, I don’t know yet. I’ve been thinking about something? But you know, that’s neither here nor there.” 

“Ahh.” Becky felt like she knew. “We’re really at _that_ age now huh?”

“Guess we are,” Ronda puffed pensively, feeling a little lightheaded, and a little happy at the thought. “God. I’m just really happy I could die.”

“You really look like you could.” Becky took a jab at Ronda’s narrowing eyes, it seemed as if it had _really_ been quite a while since nicotine had touched the other woman’s system. She laughed at the childishness of it all. “So... you got any birthday wishes, stud?” 

“First of all, fuck off. You sound like a Grease character. And neither of the cool ones. And second of all? Shit!” The gleam in Ronda’s eyes were undeniable, it was giddy and mature all at once. “If there’s such a thing as an insurance policy in relationships dude. I _never_ want to lose her.”

“Look, dude, if this is you telling me to take care of her. My hands are full.” Becky winked. “If you know what I mean.” 

And of course, Becky absolutely deserved a glass full of cold brandy being thrown at her face, dripping down her chin as it stained her two-hundred dollar shirt. “Shit! What the fuck! _That_ glass is a hundred dollars!” She gasped over the fluid dripping towards her shirt. “And this is two!” 

“Relax, it’s just eighty.” Ronda rolled her eyes, undecided between laughing or telling Becky that she deserved it. “Add it to my tab or whatever the shit.”

“I was joking!”

“I know, I know.”

“Be glad it’s your birthday.” Becky huffed, still futilely dusting fluid off of her dress shirt. “Jackass.”

“Hey Becks.” Ronda spoke seriously. “But seriously? I’m not the busiest person in the world but I’m not always there. You gotta’ promise me to watch her back when I’m not looking, alright? That’s all I want.”

The sincerity that radiated off of her friend gave Becky a halt, stopping her from helplessly drying what is already a ruined top. Matching the energy, she threw Ronda an understanding nod. “I got you dude. You and her.”

The night went out with an eruption of laughter, and thereafter, a sigh. They stopped by an open parking lot, just beneath the mirror-blue night; smoking the leftover cigar as Ronda dusted off the nicotine scent from her sweater. 

Eye fixated towards the lamplight, Ronda leaned against her car, taking in the rich chocolate aftertaste like it tasted like memory. They talked about things buried in history, the classmates and the petty fights; the first bruise Becky had earned from Ronda and generally life before life sped up into a blur of office work and bills.

And Ronda had almost forgotten, just how much of her youth stayed with Becky. Even though she had worried about a certain promotion early, Becky had a way of making her feel like they do not age, nor perish. 

She was always going to be thankful for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for readin'! Peom is Glass, Blood, and Ash by Catherynne M. Valente


	7. The Park

* * *

**The Park**

* * *

I loved you, I did. I loved you as good as anybody,

and I'll never be sorry.

* * *

She could start dancing, she thought, under the pitch-black ceiling during a night where there were no stars to light the sky. And all the holes in it are just a wide surface of blackness.

She could start dancing and fully dedicate every second of the day to it until her feet are too blistered to ever walk again. And then, she could be a painter, and then she could bruise her hands trying to come close to illustrating the picture of happiness, and the depth of despair. But she had painted before, and touched the varnished, wooden floor of a studio. She knew that no matter what it would be, she would end up exactly where she is.

Thinking of Ronda.

The droplets of a half-turnt faucet had become a familiar sound to her; her hands too forgetful that she had to rotate it at a full turn, and her spirit too damp to even stand up from where she lay. The bedsheets haven’t even been washed in a month. Probably. She couldn’t really remember. Days just kind of bled into each other, it had felt like one, long, continuous, never-ending night.

She had a list of things she could do and had imagined just how good at it she would be. She meant that she was, before everything happened, and then taken away. As a kid, she thought that she could be a doctor or maybe a lawyer, or something else. Why not? She was studious enough for it.

The beauty of having nothing was having everything ahead of you.

Well, and vice-versa.

Having everything with nothing ahead anymore.

She thought that maybe artistry would possibly, probably, maybe even come close to describing or expressing just _exactly_ how it felt like to be her. A sea of feelings; too deep and unknown, too wrong at times.

She could talk to someone.

But how do they know? They don’t get it.

Everyone who has ever been left by someone will dance to a different melody and claim that they know of each other’s songs. Sasha has always found it ridiculous, the pleasantries around condolences. ‘I know what you feel’ but they don’t. Every person only weeps in relation to what they could feel, and she couldn’t help herself but slightly hate them all.

Her fingers, having a mind of their own had an idea, as her hand haplessly searched for the phone that could have been anywhere between her bed and the rest of the room.

_Don’t hesitate to call._

She found her phone. Instinctively. Fingers scrolled just enough to reach the name Becky.

But she could do it. She could be with Ronda. Take the off-chance that there might be a heaven where Ronda was lived in. She has nothing now and she loses nothing.

_No._

She could talk to someone.

Her thumbs absentmindedly pressed call and the next thing she knew, there was a voice behind the phone. A sound of a bottle hit hardwood from the other end of the line but Sasha chose to ignore it.

 _‘Who’s this?’_ Her voice was hoarse, tired, almost deathly.

She was unable to say anything. At least at first. Unknowing of where to start because to be honest, there wasn’t really an end or a beginning to describe the bewildering realization that she felt both nothing and everything.

 _‘Fuck. Hello? Who’s this?’_ The pleasantries went on for a little longer, a string of guttural curses muttered from under the other woman’s breath, thinking she might have been pranked, or someone might have had a score to settle from a decade ago.

After a couple of guesses that were rewarded with a lack of response, Becky concluded with a ‘whatever’.

Sasha breathed. “Becky.”

 _‘Sash?’_ Realization seemingly having dawned upon Becky, she hastily brought the phone up to her ear, the device slipping from her fingers in the process. Sasha flinched from the sound of the phone directly hitting the tiled floor. _‘Fuck!’_

_‘I’m sorry about that.’_

"It's fine.” She trailed off, the other end of the call buzzing with nothing as Sasha looked for thoughts that deserted her as soon as she conjured the first attempt to verbalize them. “I couldn’t sleep.”

 _‘I didn’t know you slept.’_ A laughter. Which was followed by a long period of silence after Sasha was unable to react to humor. _‘What’s up?’_

“Just… weird thoughts I guess. Not much…”

_‘How weird is weird?’_

“Thoughts… that are…” Sasha bit her lip. “...Weird. I don’t know, the usual.”

The tense pause, or maybe the understanding pause was filled in by the phone static, or probably whatever it is that is broken coming out of Becky’s end. Somehow, the soft exhale that followed coming from the tired woman told her that she knew.

_‘Ah. It’s about-... Well do you want me to come over?’_

“No! I mean… it’s, I’m okay. Just… stay on the phone. Please?”

_‘Sure.’_

She told Becky to tell her a story. Anything. Just to get through the night, at least until the sun pops up again and drowns the howl of midnight, its deafening howl. So Becky told her about summer. In Ireland. When she was too young to even understand the concept that some things just cease to exist. It wasn’t the most interesting image in the world. She talked about how native honey was, and how her first taste of beer was way before she could even remember. But it will do.

Then she talked about how she was able to read earlier than the other kids. Becky could have been smart, at least she thought so, in a different life. Sasha told her that she had no excuse, everyone carves out a path for themselves; and unfortunately, Becky did not choose to be intelligent. And Becky conceded.

They talked and almost didn’t notice the hours - well Becky didn’t. First about the people they were supposed to be. Eventually, why they did not become it.

_‘I woulda’ been some rural kid, small-town, small-time. Shit would’ve been very different; I prefer where I am now.’_

“Sure looks like it.” Sasha jested. “What changed?”

 _‘Met Ronnie.’_ Becky slipped. And it was a little bit before the sun had started to peek out from the clouds to tell everyone that they were in for yet another jaded morning. The long silence that echoed of birds chirping or maybe a rooster crowing had indicated nothing but what was true. Sasha did not want to hear it.

She politely ended the call, thanking Becky for having stayed up. Under the faint glow of an amber dawn, Sasha’s tone had betrayed the sorrow buried deep in her tightly knit brows, a teardrop creeping from her eyes and towards her chin.

But at least she could sleep. She was exhausted enough.

* * *

This is the place I finally learned what it meant

to dance alone to the song you put in my chest.

* * *

The days had only started to get cold as the nights were from the previous months, a prelude to an endless tale of seasons that come and go. Winter had always felt like the beginning of the end even when she and Ronda had already been together, albeit just a sentiment she often forgets under the frills of festivities.

She distinctly remembers their first Christmas together; things had happened almost too fast. She got introduced to Ronda’s family and there was just so much going on that she quite literally- almost fainted. The Christmas after that became intimate, sincere, just the two of them and their dreams and nothing else occupying their own little world.

“Mmm…” Ronda had caressed her legs that were perched on top of her own thighs. Sasha remembered it so vividly that she had shivered from that ghost of a memory. “Think I got something. How about this, what was your most irrational childhood dream?”

“As in looking back now, or as a kid I’ve always known it was irrational. Because you know-”

“Christ.” Ronda chuckled. “You know about that time that I said you’re free to talk about whatever’s in your mind? I retract that.”

“Like hell you would.”

“So. Irrational childhood dream?”

 _That I could be anything._ At least she used to think. It never left the back of her throat, upon the realization that it is still an illusion peddled to anyone who would believe it. Thousands of books and philosophies and marketing schemes built upon making people feel more infinite than they are. “I wanted to be Santa’s elf.”

“Cute, cute.” Ronda hummed, and at least as far as Sasha could remember, it was laced with a thinly veiled smugness.

She caught it for as soon as it happened. A brow raised at the inaudible whistling that came absolutely unnecessary out of Ronda’s lips, Sasha pushed her legs away from Ronda’s lap, wiggling out of her grasp with arms crossed. “And you? What is your irrational childhood dream?”

Ronda sat back, almost sinking into soft cushion. “Wanted to be an Olympian of course!”

“Wait a minute.” Sasha raised a quizzical smile. “Weren’t you on track to become one when we met?”

“Nah. Not really.” Ronda’s gaze dropped from the blank television in front of them and onto the carpet, the light that bounced from her pupils dimming. “It was a lil’ before that. Shipped has sailed a long, long time ago.”

“What happened?” She did not let concern wash over her face, albeit the slight change in Ronda’s tone. After all, it wasn’t much of her business. Sasha did not want to pry. “-If you want to tell me of course!”

It was a chuckle that came out of Ronda’s mouth. Although Sasha was sure that it was every bit of reflective instead of humorous. “Of course, I do.” She leaned in and kissed Sasha’s forehead, palms traversing her legs as she closed in on her girlfriend. This took Sasha by surprise as she dazedly blinked as Ronda adjusted herself back into her place in the couch.

“Guess I’d just much rather live.” She winked.

And it was the same day from that lifetime ago where she found herself outside, standing in front of a newly opened restaurant with herself and her memories. They used to pass by this road like it had been a marker; a cue for Ronda to start yapping on about how it’s taking forever to build such a small building and that it would have been the only nearby restaurant featuring Asian fusion that ‘would not have risked them with Ebola’.

But it had been finished just a little after the funeral and it has taken so much out of Sasha to just look in that direction.

When she was but a little girl, a fleeting thought was that she could be anything. Perhaps two decades later she could muster up the gut to be brave.

Sasha took a deep breath, which has been an awfully familiar way of getting enough respiration for the past few days. It was as if her pulse had already forgotten how it is like the breathe normally. But something was different about being outside, as cool breeze made its way into her nostrils, promising a foretaste of what it is like to be free. She wasn’t sure if her limbs were trembling or if it was her lips, but she walked inside the building, a sea of bright colorful lights existing to distantly remind her that it was that time of the year.

She almost walked out. A piece of her felt like it had been kicked out of her body to watch herself from afar, alone during a time where people are supposed to be together, only hearing music through muffled filters. Except, she decided that it was the day that she was going to be brave.

There was an empty spot on the corner of the restaurant, a much colder area, that was vacated in the midst of a busy restaurant. It was the first month that they had opened, and the discount coupons given away prior to the grand opening were still valid. She settled in, unsure of what to order apart from the quintessential ‘best seller’. Sasha was willing to bet anyway that every food will probably taste as much of a food as the last.

Her order came in before she had even realized. Her eyes had fixated into the spaces that appeared and disappeared in between the faceless crowd. And she thought that the philosophers were right about social constructs; because it could have been a place she enjoyed if Ronda were still around. Because every single time she managed to drag herself out of her bed and into the light of the outside, there are frequent moments where she felt like she saw Ronda. By the corner of her eye, sitting somewhere, standing, reading, doing ordinary things. The outline of her hair, maybe a twinkle in someone’s eye, or just a very similar way that a stranger would cross their legs. It really goes to show that… maybe people are not really that special. Special was just something that people thought of other people.

“Sash!” The voice was muffled, like it was a memory on the back of her head clawing towards her consciousness. She ignored it until the voice appeared in the figure of a person that sat in front of her.

“Becky?” Sasha blinked herself back into consciousness. “What are you doing here?”

Becky only shrugged, clumsily plucking the menu out of the arms of a passing waiter. “It’s Christmas! Couldn’t think of another way to spend the day really. I was bored sitting at home, saw a commercial, and I figured… why not?” She pursed her lips, as if she wanted to say more but found the tact not to. She figured it was a good move, the woman in front of her did not look any better than when she last saw her. “So… what got you out of the house? Been a while since...”

Sasha’s face fell, any attempt to make it as if the food had gotten more interesting failed as the restrained sigh was so audible from where Becky was sitting. “Same thing, I guess. I don’t really want to be too alone and at the same time don’t want to be with too many people. Kind of negotiated a middle with myself and this is where it took me.”

Sensing tension reverberate off of Sasha once again, Becky sags into her seat and started to dive into her food. It left them with an air of thick silence as the two alternated between stopping to form words out of their mouths but failed to. The truth was that they never really interacted much without Ronda as a mediating factor. But that information is of no use to anyone anymore.

“So uh…” Becky spoke with a mouthful of rice. “How’s your soba? Any good?”

“Mhm.” Sasha only nodded as she nibbled through the tiny clump of noodles.

“How’s it like?” Becky pressed on, already halfway through her plate in contrast to Sasha’s bowl that, no matter how frequently she had put food in her mouth, did not look like food was dwindling. “The, uh… soba?”

“Like soba.”

And silence fell again, only utensil and background noise substituting what was supposed to be a conversation. It went on for a while, Becky humming out an off-key, and nano-second late version of the song that was currently playing, whereas Sasha would occasionally stop almost-playing with her food and looking through the restaurant windows with a thousand-yard stare.

Occasionally, their eyes would meet, from a utensil noise that was a little too loud that it demanded attention.

“The other night,” Becky started. “You know when you… uh… called?”

That statement gave Sasha halt, a spoonful of soup suspended in mid-air as her lips pursed all of a sudden. Slowly lowering her spoon, she unconsciously straightened up. But Becky did not seem to read into the tension that emanated from Sasha’s posture as the Irish had been looking down as she continued to speak.

“I-I didn’t want to ask then but-…“ Becky played with the hem of her own shirt, immediately feeling as if beating around the bush and subtlety has never been her strongest suit. She had always known that Sasha had mostly kept to herself, even before the… present circumstances. But whispers from their immediate circle talked of the woman just completely disappearing on people’s radars.

Becky has seen it for herself too, more than anybody else, how disgruntled, and disheveled Sasha had gotten. It was as if everything that was barely in Sasha’s eyes had dimmed. Though the woman had mostly kept to herself even before she and Ronda had met, this was different. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” The response came in so quick. Albeit, too quick. “Why’d you ask.”

 _Because I know what it sounds like when people are begging to expire._ “Sasha.” She warned, completely aware of defenses when they are being put up. “What did you mean by weird thoughts?”

Sasha cursed herself for even being caught at such a vulnerable moment. Becky has never been the one to pry. Shit, she was surprise alcohol did not fizzle out the woman’s short-term memory. Her jaw tensed up, feeling like she has been found.

“It’s not any of your business anyway…” Sasha mumbled, a little bit of hope inside of her that Becky wouldn’t hear. 

“But it is.” Becky retorted. “You don’t understand, but it is _my_ business now. I promised Ronda that I’d look after you, and you are the only person, I’m sure as hell that knows what it feels like to have this large fucking hole in your life-“

“No, _you_ don’t understand.” Sasha’s interruption was still, sounding like resentment had brewed from the bottom of her throat. “You will never understand.”

“Oh fucking try me.” Becky laughed in disbelief. “Try. Me. Sasha.” Her voice lowered to a grizzly octave. “I loved Ronnie. And there is not a lot of people that could say that they would literally take a bullet for another person. Well guess what, I would for Ronnie. You have no idea how, every day, I wish that the person who was driving at the time was _me_.”

“Well, I wish I was dead too.” Sasha coldly stated, but the quiver in her lips betrayed the iciness she thought her heart had frozen into. “I wish that could have been any other person but Ronda. Don’t you think I don’t wish it could have been you?”

If tears were forming in Sasha’s lids, she had made the best of her effort to blink them away. There was a lot to say. Too much that it had been a sea of words that could not find their shore. So slowly, surely, tears had started to seep out of Sasha’s defenses. “ _God_. I wish it could have been you.”

“I know…” Becky mumbled. And then they stayed the way they were, in what felt like an eternity; without a care in the world for the shifting crowd that looked at them for every time they would pass by. Sasha cried muted tears and Becky let her, as she herself drowned in a pit of her own shame – because to a huge extent, Sasha was right.

“Sasha...” She broke the silence. “Did you ever visit her grave?”

* * *

Thanks for the symphony.

I can still hear it when I think of you,

and it is so much like remembering.

* * *

The answer was no, of course. She had never tried, and as a matter of fact, she tried not to. But maybe Becky had implied correctly.

It was time.

So, in some ways, they did spend the Christmas with Ronda. A litter of flowers, bottles, and footprints to accompany them throughout the longest night of the year. Becky drank from a flask, and for the first time in months, Sasha did too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poem is The Park by Caitlyn Siehl hope yall enjoyed


End file.
